Can the former Unum buildings become a college campus?

Sunday

Jun 23, 2013 at 6:00 AMJun 26, 2013 at 12:51 PM

By Aaron Nicodemus

Downtown Worcester has a collection of white elephant office and municipal buildings that city officials are pressing private developers — and some of the city's largest institutions — to buy or lease.

City Manager Michael V. O'Brien is connecting developers and institutions with the owners of these white elephants, in hope that a meeting will lead to a deal.

A week ago, Mr. O'Brien paired Worcester State University officials with Colliers International, the Boston real estate development firm that is marketing the former Unum Group buildings on Chestnut and Walnut streets.

"The approach was made to us," said Carl A. Herren, assistant to the president for international, community and government affairs at Worcester State. "We agreed to walk through the buildings. I think they wanted us to see the building's distinctive features."

The Unum buildings at 18 Chestnut St. and 14 Walnut St. are 380,000 square feet of vacant office space with about 800 parking spaces. Some of those parking spaces are on site, but many are spread out in small lots on nearby side streets.

Tony Hayes, vice president of investment sales for Colliers International, called the buildings "a great opportunity for someone."

Mr. Hayes said Colliers has shown the building to several schools and hospitals, including the Worcester State tour last week. He said a "major student housing developer" has toured the building as well.

While the site seems overwhelmingly large at first, Mr. Hayes said it can be subdivided into three separate spaces.

The largest is the older portion of the five-story building at 18 Chestnut St.; then there is the five-story addition, built in the 1960s along Chestnut Street; and finally the smallest, the 80,000-square-foot former Commerce High School building at 14 Walnut St. that connects by a skywalk to the main Chestnut Street building.

"There is some flexibility there," said Mr. Hayes. "It has the parking for a suburban location, but it's in a downtown location."

But the biggest obstacle in marketing the Unum buildings is their sheer size, said James G. Umphrey, a principal at Kelleher & Sadowsky, a Worcester real estate development company.

"There's not a lot of depth in the market for users that are that large," Mr. Umphrey said. "The strength of the market is for 5,000 to 25,000 square feet."

The state Department of Transitional Assistance, which recently put out feelers for 78,000 square feet of office space, is the only entity actively looking for that much office space in downtown Worcester, he said.

Everyone else, apparently, needs some coaxing and cajoling.

During WSU's recent tour of the Unum buildings, Mr. Herren said the buildings were pitched to the university as a perfect place for student dormitories, as well as classroom and office space. The entire group of buildings would make an ideal college campus — or so went the pitch.

Among the amenities already in place are a newly renovated cafeteria, a former employee gymnasium that could easily be filled with workout equipment for students, and some impressive meeting spaces. The buildings are well-maintained and in good shape.

"Our position is to engage in these conversations mostly in the preliminary phase," Mr. Herren said. "We're window shopping, for now. In the long term, we are a likely buyer." A likely buyer of space somewhere, he added, but not necessarily the Unum buildings.

There are also other challenges to bringing WSU students downtown, he said, challenges that must be met for any downtown property to work.

"There is a certain amount of retail, entertainment, transportation, parking and safety issues that we would have to address to bring students downtown," he said. "Are we out in front? Are we the egg, or are we the chicken?"

I would say that the MCPHS University, the private pharmacy school which purchased and converted the shuttered Crowne Plaza Hotel into student housing and classroom space, is creating the critical mass that Mr. Herren spoke of. In his terms, MCPHS University is the egg.

Private developers have begun renovating other downtown spaces to accommodate students, which is the type of spinoff development that city officials dream about.

Quinsigamond Community College, with its plans to lease the renovated former Telegram & Gazette building for classroom and office space, is following MCPHS' lead.

Could a marriage between Worcester State and Unum be next? At this stage, it's too early to tell.